THE DAILY EDITION · 24 SEPTEMBER 2026
Anthropic says Claude agents flagged CRISPR-like enzyme system; function unknown
Anthropic reports Claude's agents flagged a CRISPR-like enzyme system with no known function, described as ART.
Anthropic said Claude autonomously discovered a novel enzyme system that resembles CRISPR repeats and is associated with a reverse-transcriptase enzyme; the team does not yet know its function.
In one program, Claude analyzed a DNA sequence database with about 950 agents working in parallel over roughly 21 hours, scanning tens of millions of tokens to identify candidates.
Anthropic says the system is called array-associated reverse transcriptases, or ART, and notes the pattern occurs next to an unusual RT gene, in bacteriophages; the RT family had been seen before, but Claude flagged a distinctive accompanying sequence pattern.
Feng Zhang, a CRISPR pioneer, called the work ‘an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery’.
The post describes the lab work as a joint effort between Claude-based workflows and human scientists; Claude reads literature, generates short reports for each candidate, and scientists decide which to test in the lab.
The researchers say function remains unknown and that work is ongoing to understand ART’s role and mechanism in the viruses that carry it.
Anthropic notes a pre-print has been released with more detail on the methods and findings.